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Beauty…

Well we are home and I am unpacking (again), washing (does it ever end?), and basically feeding and clothing people big and small (goes without saying) and trying to enjoy the scenery (always)… I thought I would mark the relief I feel at being home in two ways…

This is the first.

I am sharing a small series of shots I took the other day while waiting for the boys to bring in some cattle – the same time I took these photos of bees and scotch thistles.  I also took some willy wagtail pics (I’ll share them soon).

And while I am no wildlife photographer, I was really stoked with these photos (especially the last one)…

dragonfly_8373 e

A dragonfly hovering low over the shallow water right at the edge of the river… now if you have ever watched dragonflies in action, you will know that they dart a lot.

Hover-hover, dart-DART!

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And you often notice a little ripple on the surface of the water but it’s too fast to really SEE what they have done there…

dragonfly_8381 e

Well, amongst the 34 almost-continuous shots I took of this dragonfly, I got THIS one…

dragonfly_8382 e

A dragonfly drinking.  (Either that or using the river as a giant bidet – I think I’ll go with the first guess!) .  I googled it and discovered this passage here:

Dragonflies drink by thrusting their bodies down onto the water’s surface in a sequence of one to three splashdowns. Water is absorbed through the exoskeleton. Dew is also absorbed on cool mornings.

I was lucky enough that the shot doesn’t mind being enlarged a bit – like this:

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Totally. Cool.

Did YOU know that dragonflies drank through their bottom bones?

You learn a new darned thing every day!

🙂

BB

PS Second part of homecoming shared soon.  If you follow me on Twitter, you might already have a clue…

PPS Photo nerd info for this series of shots (super fast shutter and slightly underexposed):

Exposure/Shutter speed 0.001 sec (1/1600)
Aperture/f stop f/5.6
Focal Length/lense 200 mm
ISO Speed/film speed 400
Exposure Bias/compensation +1/3 EV

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